A financial instrument trading system, such as a futures exchange, referred to herein also as an “Exchange”, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME), provides a contract market where financial instruments, for example futures and options on futures, are traded. Futures is a term used to designate all contracts for the purchase or sale of financial instruments or physical commodities for future delivery or cash settlement on a commodity futures exchange. A futures contract is a legally binding agreement to buy or sell a commodity at a specified price at a predetermined future time. An option is the right, but not the obligation, to sell or buy the underlying instrument (in this case, a futures contract) at a specified price within a specified time. The commodity to be delivered in fulfillment of the contract, or alternatively the commodity for which the cash market price shall determine the final settlement price of the futures contract, is known as the contract's underlying reference or “underlier.” The terms and conditions of each futures contract are standardized as to the specification of the contract's underlying reference commodity, the quality of such commodity, quantity, delivery date, and means of contract settlement. Cash Settlement is a method of settling a futures contract whereby the parties effect final settlement when the contract expires by paying/receiving the loss/gain related to the contract in cash, rather than by effecting physical sale and purchase of the underlying reference commodity at a price determined by the futures contract, price.
Typically, the Exchange provides for a centralized “clearing house” through which all trades made must be confirmed, matched, and settled each day until offset or delivered. The clearing house is an adjunct to the Exchange, and may be an operating division of the Exchange, which is responsible for settling trading accounts, clearing trades, collecting and maintaining performance bond funds, regulating delivery, and reporting trading data. The essential role of the clearing house is to mitigate credit risk. Clearing is the procedure through which the Clearing House becomes buyer to each seller of a futures contract, and seller to each buyer, also referred to as a novation, and assumes responsibility for protecting buyers and sellers from financial loss due to breach of contract, by assuring performance on each contract. A clearing member is a firm qualified to clear trades through the Clearing House.
An interest rate futures contract, also referred to as an interest rate future, is a futures contract having an underlying instrument/asset that pays interest, for which the parties to the contract are a buyer and a seller agreeing to the future delivery of the interest bearing asset, or a contractually specified substitute. Such a futures contract permits a buyer and seller to lock in the price, or in more general terms the interest rate exposure, of the interest-bearing asset for a future date.
An interest rate swap (“IRS”) is a contractual agreement between two parties, i.e., the counterparties, where one stream of future interest payments is exchanged for another, e.g., a stream of fixed interest rate payments in exchange for a stream of floating interest rate payments, based on a specified principal amount. An IRS may be used to limit or manage exposure to fluctuations in interest rates. One common form of IRS exchanges a stream of floating interest rate payments on the basis of the 3-month London interbank offered rate for a stream of fixed-rate payments on the basis of the swap's fixed interest rate. Another common form of IRS, knows as an overnight index swap, exchanges at its termination a floating rate payment determined by daily compounding of a sequence of floating interest rates on the basis of an overnight interest rate reference (e.g., the US daily effective federal funds rate, or the European Overnight Index Average (EONIA)) over the life of the swap, for a fixed rate payment on the basis of daily compounding of the overnight index swap's fixed interest rate over the life of the swap.
An interest rate swap futures contract is one in which the underlying instrument is an interest rate swap. As such, an interest rate swap futures contract permits “synthetic” exposure to the underlying interest rate swap, i.e., without entailing actual ownership of the underlying IRS.
In a typical futures trading environment, the standardization of futures contracts and the nature of the central counterparty based trading system allows an Exchange, or market participant thereof, to net together offsetting positions in the same contract for the purpose of reducing the margin requirement to reflect the reduced risk of loss of such positions and/or to outright consolidate positions to reduce the size of the portfolio and/or reduce transaction fees therefore. As the Exchange, being a central counterparty to all transactions, ensures that each counter-party is not at risk of loss due to the default of the other party, such netting and consolidation by one market participant does not affect the positions and risk undertaken by another participant.
In the case of IRS contracts, however, the variability in the characteristics of positions which may exist in any given portfolio, such as the maturity date, coupon, etc. makes it difficult to identify suitable positions for netting though, for example, such positions, though not identical, may exist which are similar enough as to represent a reduced risk of loss meriting a reduction in the margin requirement. Further complicating this process is the bilateral nature of an IRS contract where a particular position of one party is coupled with a counter position of a counter-party thereto. Further, as described above, positions in IRS contracts, and in particular, various combinations of positions therein, are typically undertaken to serve particular economic purposes, such as to achieve a particular risk exposure or risk profile, which may be unique to that market participant. Accordingly, IRS contract positions within a particular portfolio may not be consolidated without necessarily affecting not only the economic purpose intended by the market participant holding that portfolio but also the economic purposes which may be different, of any counter party market participants thereto. Accordingly, opportunities to reduce margin requirements and/or transactional fees for IRS contract portfolios are limited.